A recently repeated episode of daytime TV favourite A Place In The Sun contained a stark warning for anyone in the UK wishing to move to Spain. And the advice presenter Laura Hamilton gave about property prices still remains relevent more than six months after the episode was first screened.
The sunny European country remains one of the most popular choices for expats, as it's often seen as an affordable place to buy a house. But those who are serious about buying a property there are being warned to do their research, especially on what they can afford.
It follows an episode of the Channel 4 show where one person was given a reality check by presenter Laura Hamilton, which first aired in July 2022. Spain, once a hot spot for cheap property in the sun, may not offer the goods that it once did, Hamilton said, having been asked to help home seeker Jennie find a holiday home in the Costa del Sol with a budget of just £85,000.
Unfortunately for Jennie, Laura had bad news waiting for her. She said: "I have to give you a serious reality check — a budget of under £90,000 for a two-bedroom property is going to be exceptionally tough. So I think in terms of your budget, we are definitely going to need to have some flexibility there."
And property prices in Spain have continued to soar since the epsiode first aired. Prices jumped nine per cent in January this year, from a year earlier. However, Spanish propery experts Realista said the market did slow down in the last half of 2022.
With regards to 2023, Realista says: "Analysts are unanimous that there will be fewer transactions on the Spanish property market in 2023. After an expected 600,000 this year, there will be around 550,000 next year. However, experts point out that half a million sales a year is a healthy number and indicates a balanced market.
"The latest figures point to an 8% increase in property prices this year [2023], although some parts of Spain have seen much higher rises. For example, on the Costa del Sol, they went up by 11% in the year to Q3, with resale prices experiencing a 13.5% uptick.
"While experts agree that house prices will fall in Spain in 2023, they differ in the amount. Pisos.com predicts that prices will be 1 to 3% lower, although with the caveat that they will see negligible changes in the busiest markets in Spain. ING forecasts a 1% rise in 2023, and BBVA Research expects the increase to be around 2%."
Birmingham Live reports that house prices in Spain were still unsettled when the A Place in the Sun episode first aired, and that the market had not properly recovered from the pandemic.
The show saw Jennie discovering that the show's selection of different properties in the resort town of Estepona in the Costa del Sol were turning out to be much smaller than she had thought.
It resulted in her deciding not to make an offer on any of the properties she was shown. A Place in the Sun viewers then picked up on Hamilton's reaction, with one, according to the Daily Star, saying on Twitter that she didn't look at all happy, only in stronger language. Another said the programme's editors must have cut a lot of expletives from the footage shot by the cameraman.
A third reportedly said: "There you go, total timewasters. You'd have guessed they'd have told her her budget was completely unrealistic for what she wanted."
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Hamilton, having delivered the "reality check" to Jennie, said she believed that many people looking to buy a home in the European country had not realised that the Spanish property market was not back to being buoyant. As a result there remained a demand for property but very little actually on the market. Consequently, Spanish house prices posted their biggest annual increase since the boom period before the global financial crisis. Prices jumped nine per cent in January this year, from a year earlier, according to a monthly index compiled by Fotocasa, a real estate website. This was the sharpest rise since September 2006.
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